Kit Williams

Kit Williams is an artist who gained popularity at the end of the 1970's in the UK for his "puzzle book" Masquerade. This book was a unique concept at the time : the story and illustrations in the book contained clues to the location of a buried treasure - a golden hare sculpture. The journalist Bamber Gasgcoine acted as an adjudicator and wrote a book and several articles documenting the search for the treasure. Later paperback editions of Masquerade contained the complete solution to the puzzle. The book sparked off a small industry of copycat "armchair treasurehunt" books.

Kit Williams went on to create another puzzle book in 1985, sometimes referred to as "the bee book". This book was unique as far as I am aware in being untitled. The name of the story was the answer to the puzzle (the British Library lists the book simply as "Untitled Children's Story"). This time, wary of the hype that surrounded the first book, he made the puzzle substantially easier, and instead of burying the treasure, offered it to the applicant who could best express the answer to the riddle without using words. The eventual winner constructed a mechanical clock as his answer.

I won't reveal the name of the second book here, as it is pretty trivial to find it on the web if you so desire, and it would spoil it for people who have not read the book. Both books seem to be out of print, but they are well worth tracking down.